For seven days Rocky Face Mountain echoed the rattling fire. Milk Mountain behind also threw it back, and Horn Mountain behind Milk. Crow Valley saw hard fighting, and Mill Creek Gap and Trail Gap. Alabama troops were posted above the last two and on the top of the Chattoogata Ridge. Here they laid in line huge stones, ready for the throwing down when the pass below should darken with the blue. They made also slight breastworks and rifle-pits. At Dug Gap were stationed two regiments of Arkansas and a brigade of Kentucky cavalry. On the eighth, Hooker attacked these in force. Kentucky fought dismounted; Kentucky and Arkansas together did mightily. Johnston sent to Hardee to dispatch aid to this point. Up to Dug Gap came Patrick Cleburne with Lowrey’s and Granbury’s brigades. Cleburne came at a double-quick, through the intense heat, up the rough mountain-side. The woods rang with fighting until the dark came down. Then Geary rested in the valley below and Cleburne on the heights above, and the stars shone on both. Stewart’s and Stevenson’s divisions held Rocky Face Mountain. Old Rocky Face saw tense fighting, stubborn as its own make-up. Skirmish upon skirmish occupied the hours. Here, too, were breastworks and rifle-pits, and the blue advanced against them, and the blue went back again, and came again, and went back again. All the time the batteries kept up a galling, raking fire. Pettus’s Alabama brigade was at the top of the mountain, at the signal station. Brown and Reynolds and Cumming were lower down, toward the valley. And on the floor of the valley, here visible in square or roughly circular clearings, here hidden by the thick woods, was a host of the enemy. Morning, noon, and afternoon went on the skirmishing. On the ninth occurred a determined assault upon Pettus’s line. There was a bloody, protracted struggle, and while the mountain flamed and thundered, the blue sharpshooters paid deadly attention to the brigades below of Cumming and Reynolds. The Alabamians on Rocky Face repelled the assault; down, down it sank to the floor of the valley. After an interval a line of battle appeared before Cumming. The Georgian threw forward skirmishers. There was a battalion of artillery—Major John William Johnston’s battalion. Cherokee Artillery, Stephens’s Light Artillery, Tennessee Battery, all came into action. The major commanding—once the captain of the Botetourt Artillery, of the “homesick battery” of Chickasaw Bayou and Port Gibson—placed his guns with skill and saw them served well and double well. Together with Cumming’s skirmishers the battalion checked the blue advance along this line.